Secure Your Express App: Implementing JWT Authentication and Authorization

Secure Your Express App

Are you a beginner looking to add authentication and authorization to your Express.js application? Look no further! In this beginner-friendly guide, we’ll walk through the process of implementing JSON Web Token (JWT) based authentication and authorization in your Express app. By the end, you’ll have a secure and robust authentication system that you can integrate into your projects with ease.

Why JWT?

JSON Web Tokens (JWT) are a popular choice for authentication because they are stateless, meaning you don’t need to store session data on the server. Instead, all the necessary information is encoded in the token itself, making it easy to transmit and verify.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have Node.js and npm installed on your machine. Also, ensure you have a basic understanding of JavaScript and Express.js.

Setting Up Your Express App

Let’s start by setting up a new Express.js project. If you haven’t already installed Express globally, you can do so by running:

npm install express

Then, create a new Express app by running:

express jwt-auth-app
cd jwt-auth-app
npm install